Coming to America; Not Funny Movie, America Brace for a Brutal Reality

I read an interesting article today that was posted in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Foxconn Technology, who is coming to the state of Wisconsin, is considering bringing in personnel from China to staff its large facility which will make flat panel displays.

But the opinioned piece I read in Forbes about the WSJ article states this should not be surprising because all the factories that make electronic flat panel display technology is made in China. Those factories in China also deploy the appropriate automated machines that run those factories. Makes sense. Willy Shih, the contributor to the Forbes article, states “If you don’t have those skills, you will likely lose a lot of money before you ever get such a factory running. By a lot, I mean billions of dollars.”

He further wrote “Any factory that uses complex production tools is going to need help from the tool makers to get the machines up and running.” I would agree, this only makes logical sense.

But what I find to be a conundrum is that Foxconn has committed to hiring local talent in Wisconsin in exchange for huge subsidies. So…who will be hired?

As I hypothesize in my book, our current corporate culture of eliminating seasoned talent at the point where they have gained solid expertise in the form of experience, leadership and management will eventually implode our country.

How you say? This is a perfect example of what is to come in the future due to continuous slashing of experienced American talent out of our workforce and our low priority on Education: Foreign talent will be the ones running companies in America and American talent with less education, experience and leadership will work in the lower levels of those companies.

For most of this decade, and the two prior, I’ve worked with hundreds of companies whose focus was on cutting many layers of talent to supply profits to the top, at the expense of overworking lower levels of employees and not allowing them to be mentored by those they would have by the middle and senior levels of folks that have fallen victim to Ageism.

See, Ageism is a manufactured bias that simply eliminates people in their 60’s, 50’s and now in their 40’s. Why? Because they’ve gained experience and cost a little more. Cut enough of these people and the few at the top can make crazy money and show profit to the tune of millions and billions on the balance sheet, which boost stock profits. And stock profits are priority # 1. All this for just the richest folks who own those stocks at the expense of national workforce prosperity.

It’s that simple. It gives executives and company shareholders short term results. The short term results is what you’ve been seeing and hearing about for many years now. Talented middle aged people let go and forced out of their careers. And no one has any answers for them or why it happens.

What does happen to these talent educated people? You may see them greeting you at your local department store. Or they may pick you up when you call for a ride on your app. And guess what? Chances are excellent it’ll be you one day – way before you expect it.